On Sunrises at 47

DiDi took me to watch the sun come up over the ocean today. It was a present; my birthday is later this week, but the weather is predicted to turn.

The experience reminds me of motherhood.

You wait as the sky begins at black, flat stomach busy only with consumption.

And then the sky tinges gently at the edges, softening, roundness forming from a place you can't see.

The bulge grows larger, a gradual magic that happens before your eyes, apparently without motion.

Your view of the universe changes as you watch. The sky so stable and predictably blue or steel striates suddenly into pink and orange and violet. The world is changed as you watch; everything is colored by this miracle unfolding.

Finally it crowns. Gloriously unique, magnetically miraculous, filling your heart with the wonder of creation and the joy of possibilities.

You watch as it continues to rise, distance increasing. The colors fade as it progresses, as if newness and color are one, both of them worn away by time.

Throughout the day you check on it, this creation you remember as wonderful. You watch it and set your clock by it and live your life by it and are grateful for it. Every hour.

Inevitably, bittersweet, you watch it go away again. A burst of color if conditions are right. A cloudy withdrawal if they are not.

And you stand in the dark, serenaded by stars that sing or drenched by their weeping.

Omnificence unfolding in purple striation and sparkling water

Omnificence.

Good word, eh?

DiDi invented it last night, after asking me to use one word to describe the undescribable beauty of the sunset over Lake Michigan.

It was perfect. Magnificence combined with vast, ubiquitous knowledge.

He is all knowing, all present, all powerful.

And all beautiful.

Omnificent.

I love it.



(Found the term in a few dictionaries BTW, defined as "unlimited in creative power". I like DiDi's usage better.)

That's MY God

Another Holy Spirit moment from my recent trip. Both DiDi and I have family in the area that we visited, and so our week was broken up between relaxation together and time with mothers and sisters and neices and nephews of every size. I had not been to an ocean in years, and so one of our goals was to spend some time on the beach. Our flight home was not scheduled till late afternoon, and so on that day we packed up all our gear and decided to go for one last hour or two at a beach before heading to the airport. 

It was beautiful, and turning away was hard. So hard in fact, that we ended up staying later than we should, and our frantic drive to the airport included a bit of hysterics on my part along with much rushing and hustling and scrambling. I've struggled lately with time, and have repeatedly underestimated times I've expected to get back from the grocery store, or from church, or from this or that event. Returning home an entire day late really would have been the icing on my cake of lateness. I was wracked with guilt. DiDi would undoubtedly say I was overboard with it. (Might have had something to do with the farewell wine I'd consumed. But that's another tale for another day.) 

 We eventually arrived and rushed up to the desk to check our bags and check in. I looked a sight; all mascara-smeared cheeks, wind-tangled hair, and reined-in hysteria. The two airline reps looked at eachother and muttered "These must be the ones." They knew we were rushing, knew the flight we must be looking for, and also knew the connection we needed to make. They were bracing for the conversation that was about to take place. "You DO know that your flight has been delayed, don't you?", the closest one said. My jaw literally dropped to my chest. I was saved. Somehow, I had been saved. But looking at them, I could tell there was more they had to say. The rep braced herself again, then informed us that the next flight out would be too late to make our connection back home. We could not leave until the following day. 

Not only was I saved from being my usual, lame, late self, I was also given an extra day with no familial obligations and nothing to do but relax with my closest, dearest, and most beloved friend. I gaped a slack-jawed gape at DiDi, and saw that she was wearing the smug look she reserves for occasions when our Lord does something fantastic and stunning that knocks me sideways. The look that says "Yeah, that's MY God. You know it. Mmm Hmm." All casual while simultaneously bursting with pride. 

 The airline reps, beleaguered from having to give bad news to customer after customer all afternoon, looked bewildered and one of them asked: "You're happy about this???" DiDi, being the cool chick that she is, God's comrade, Daughter of Thunder, calmly tossed back "Answered prayer." 

So that's the story of how I got to stay another day, to drive a convertible back toward the beach, to eat a lovely, relaxed meal in a nice restaurant, and to huddle wrapped in a blanket with the friend of my heart watching the sun come up over the ocean. 

Imagine: the maker of that sun and that ocean and that incredible miraculous sand, desired to give -me- these gifts. Yep. That's MY God.

The soul of God, shouting for joy

Where others see but the dawn coming over the hill,
I see the soul of God shouting for joy.

-- William Blake

It does not mean nothing

From Chance or the Dance? by Thomas Howard, Ch1, pg 12-13:

"...it did not mean nothing that the sun went down and night came and the moon and stars appeared and then dawn and the sun and morning again and another day, which would itself wax and then wane into twilight and dusk and night. It did not mean nothing to them that the time of work was under the aegis of the bright sun and that it was the sun that poured life into the seeds that they were planting and that brought out the sweat on their forehaeds, and that the time of rest was under the scepter of the silver moon. This was the diurnal exhibition of what was True--that there are a panoply and a rythm and a cycle, a waxing and a waning, a rising and a setting and then a rising again. And to them it was not for nothing that the king wore a crown of gold and that the lord mayor wore medallions. This was the political exhibition of what was, in fact, True--that there are royalty and authority and heirarchy at the heart of things and that it is possible to see this in lions and eagles and queen bees as well as in the court of the king. To them it was not for nothing that a man went in to a woman in private and uncovered her and knew ecstasy in the experieince of her being. This was simply a case in point of what was True anyway--that there is a mystery of being not to be thrown open to all, and that the right knowledge of another being is ecstatic, and that what appears under these carnal forms is, in fact, the image of what is actually True.

Undiminished

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunitic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

-- C. S. Lewis